An exercise from Old Friend From Far Away by Natalie Goldberg.
When did you know you were going to suffer but went ahead anyway?
Two instances. Different times of my life, different people, no names/names changed. Both to be continued.
_______________
“Now, this is pushing it a little,” he said, as he ran his hand over the slope of my back, the dip of my waist, the curve of my hip. We lay facing one another on his squeaky bottom bunk in a dorm room with white, gymnasium walls. “Luckily, I have amazing self-control.” He closed his eyes.
When I ran my hand over his chest, he trembled. I looked at him with a kind of awe, more astounded by my own actions, my intentions, than his. I knew it was wrong, but that didn’t stop me.
“You know, I’d tell you you’re beautiful,” I said, “but my nonfiction teacher doesn’t like that word.” He opened his eyes and pulled me closer to him.
“Why?” he asked, resting his head on his hand.
“Because,” I said, “‘beautiful’ is so subjective and abstract. I mean it’s not really descriptive at al–”
Lips on mine before the words even had a chance.
It was just past midnight the first time we’d decided to meet outside of an instant message. I can still picture the white gold glow of the streetlamps on the paved campus walkway, illuminating my anxiety as I stood frozen, waiting for him. I was surrounded by maple and birch trees characteristic of the University of Idaho, their leaves already rusting and tumbling to the ground in graceful torrents. The cold air sharpened like a blade on the veins in my nose as I inhaled.
“Hey, kid,” I heard, and there they were: the same arrogant eyes that caught mine from across the room in Fiction three days a week. The thick, dark, chaotically uniform hair. The leather jacket.
Two weeks later I found myself in the One World Café, running my middle finger over the rough plastic edge of my beverage cup. I watched the whipped cream melt into the remaining raspberry mélange in a dissonant swirl.
Keith sat across from me with his laptop open on the glass tabletop. I stared at the coffee beans encased beneath its surface, struggling to place my attention on their shape and texture, the cool, hard feel of the glass beneath my palm, the ornate brass bars of the balcony, the large painted doors hanging from the café ceiling. My eyes shifted to his iced hazelnut latté. Silver-studded ear. Animated laugh. I had failed.
He turned his computer screen toward me, revealing a large photograph of a dark-eyed girl.
“That’s Dannie,” he said. The girl he always talked about. The girl who reminded me of me a few years younger. The girl he would cheat on one week later.
He raised his eyes to mine and set his teeth in a grin.
“Isn’t she pretty?”
_______________
I helped my boyfriend cheat on a drug test. He obtained a latex condom full of urine from a fellow student in the high school bathroom. Knotted it, hid it in his jeans pocket all day–hoped it wouldn’t break, maybe more than he ever would again. When his mother passed him a plastic cup and waited outside the bathroom after school, he broke open the condom, emptied it, handed her back the cup. He passed the test.
That maneuver was half my advice. These days, I don’t remember which half. The point is he called me from Idaho, distraught, told me he might not be able to visit me in Canada for Christmas. It had been four or five months.
“My parents found out I was smoking cigarettes.” This was news to me. “They want to test me for pot.” He choked back something.
I stared at the bedroom wall regretfully, swallowed. “Well it doesn’t matter, right? I mean, it will come back negative, won’t it?”
Silence. There was always silence then.
Two years later I sat near the back of a courtroom in a summer dress as he plead guilty to his first DUI–his father rising, bug-eyed and panicked, from the pew next to me. I gripped the bench, lowered my head, closed my eyes.
The judge was kind enough to advise him against that plea, persuading him to change it. The room was crowded with a half-dozen other offenders–most for similar reasons, one for a hit-and-run. They all plead innocent, shook their heads incredulously when he spoke the truth.
He let out a nervous laugh, and when the judge asked him again for his plea, he said, “not guilty.”
His father exhaled. I sat back, and relief swept through me. The courtroom settled. We embraced the lie.
I don’t, I didn’t regret that answer–I never had before. What I regret now is having been the only one in the room who needed to believe it.
